Adrenaline ePSP Custom Firmware will have custom IPL and 64MB of RAM (and what that means for you)

Vita Developer TheFloW confirmed a while ago that he has been working on a Custom Firmware for the PSP running within the PS Vita. The tool, nicknamed Adrenaline, will allow you to run a PSP hack within the PS Vita. This will allow you to run PSP Homebrews, plugins, and backups without having to use more constrained tools such as VHBL.

Custom IPL for your PSP CFW on the Vita

A couple days ago, TheFlow commented that thanks to the recent taiHEN release from Team molecule, he was able to run Adrenaline through a custom IPL, making it a true PSP Custom Firmware for the PSP.

Let’s rewind a little bit, what does that exactly mean for Adrenalin in terms of features, and for you as a potential user?

Hacking the IPL, or creating Custom IPLs in the PSP days was essentially equivalent to having the Custom firmware instantly loaded at boot time on One’s PSP. In other words, instead of having to load a hack in RAM every time you would reboot your PSP, the hack was already “integrated” within the console’s firmware, meaning the console would load the custom firmware automatically without any action from the user. The only hacking step was to install the custom firmware once.

In practice, for the end user, the difference wasn’t huge. Not having a custom IPL boiled down to launching an exploit after each reboot which was literally 5 seconds of effort. This also meant your PSP was “clean” and a simple reboot was enough to wipeout any potential hack. But to some, it also felt less “real” than a Custom firmware that was here at startup.

I would expect the same kind of difference on the PS Vita: I assume that Adrenaline will modify the ePSP files running on the PS Vita, in a way that you’d have to do the installation only once, so that any time you run the PSP emulator moving forward (even through purchased games?) you’d be running within TheFloW’s Custom Firmware. There’s lots of unknowns but it seems the main benefit is that you’d have to install Adrenaline only once. In practice you probably won’t see a difference.

At the hacking level, though, it means TheFlow has been able to fundamentally alter the PSP Firmware installed on the PS Vita, rather than having to do runtime hacks. Although it won’t make a major difference to the end user, from a hacking perspective this is pretty major.

64 MB of RAM in ePSP

Maybe more importantly, TheFloW announced that he has unlocked the PSP’s extra RAM. Now, some of you might remember that the original PSP, the psp 1000, had only 32MB of RAM. With 8MB used by the system, this left only 24MB for homebrew. The PSP 2000 introduced 64MB, and as such games and homebrews had access to at total of 56MB (a 133% improvement). Although all games were compatible with the PSP 1000, this additional RAM gave them an option to load faster or use higher resolution textures.

Some PSP homebrews also run significantly better with 64MB, including Daedalus (although, of course, I don’t see many people using emulators within the PSP when we have retroarch on the Vita).

My homebrew Wagic is an example of a homebrew that runs noticably better with more RAM: the game can load higher resolution textures of the cards, or has to load textures much less often, resulting in a much smoother game (less loading times in general). Aquaria was an other example of homebrew game that required the 64MB, it couldn’t run on 32MB.

From my perspective, the 64MB unlock will have a more significant impact on end users than the cIPL. Both of these achievements are extremely cool either way, and I can’t wait to get my hands on Adrenaline for my PS Vita!

A Preview of Adrenaline

TheFloW shared a preview of Adrenaline a few hours ago. Looks gorgeous

TheFlow has stated a few times that Adrenaline is taking a significant amount of his free time, and has not stated a release date for his ePSP Custom Firmware. Stay tuned.

Don’t forget those of us who’d simply like to play all their previous PSP purchases on the Vita but can’t due to Sony’s inexplicably laziness or lack of self-awareness. Star Ocean on Vita finally? Heck yeah!

And once you get rid of your old psp, sony will push out a new update for vita stating ‘fixed bugs’, once sony pushes out a new update stating ‘fixed bugs’, you will update your ps vita and lose your vita hack………dont let sony push out a new update for the ps vita stating ‘fixed bugs’…….stay safe, keep you old psp in your drawer! 🙂

You know, I think the cIPL needs more attention than it gets. cIPL means that the FW is practically hacked and (to boot) in the PSVITA is a pretty much huge news. Custom FW in the Vita, even for the PSP emulator, are very good news, because it means that the fort of security around the VITA core is starting to crumble. But I will stay to my PSP for the time being, because in my PSP I have 128GB of storage and have all my backups there along with my PSX and GBA games, I wait for the day that the travesty that is called “PSVITA Memory cards” gets reversed engineered and have some 3rd party adapters.

It’s for taiHEN, so that effectively means 3.60 only. Sony patched the exploit with 3.61, so it won’t run at anything higher than 3.60. There’s a potential it could run at firmwares lower than 3.60, but someone would have to port a lot of code for that.

The most outrageous thing is that people sell the PSVita release method. Here in Guatemala the sellers of games and consoles sell the method of release of Psvita approximately in 60 $. While many developers strive to program others easily sell it. How outrageous.

The most outrageous thing is that people sell the PSVita release method. Here in Guatemala the sellers of games and consoles sell the method of release of Psvita approximately in 60 $. While many developers strive to program others easily sell it. How outrageous.

I just want to ThanK TheFloW for all his hard work on this as well as his other meaningful Vita work. Can’t wait to get this but do wish we could get cheap memory or better yet for my PSTV just get ux0: redirected to the usb port and bingo cheap *** memory for our VitaTVs. This is all good good good news

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